Nicole M. Crawford, an experienced museum leader, curator and scholar known for connecting art with teaching across academic disciplines, has been named executive director of Old Dominion 91Ƶ’s Barry Art Museum.
Crawford will begin her new role on September 21 after serving as director and chief curator of the 91Ƶ of Wyoming Art Museum. Her appointment comes at a defining moment for the Barry Art Museum as construction continues on a $23 million expansion that will double its gallery space and create new opportunities for exhibitions, education and community engagement.
“I wasn’t actively looking to leave Wyoming, so it would have taken a very special opportunity to make me consider a move,” Crawford said. “The Barry Art Museum was that opportunity. There is a sense of possibility here that is incredibly exciting to me.”
“Nicole Crawford brings the vision, experience and collaborative spirit needed to guide the Barry Art Museum through this transformative period,” said Old Dominion 91Ƶ President Brian O. Hemphill, Ph.D. “Her commitment to integrating the arts into teaching, research and the broader community aligns strongly with our mission at Old Dominion 91Ƶ. As we prepare for this next exciting and impactful chapter for the Barry Art Museum and Old Dominion 91Ƶ, her leadership will help us build on Dick and Carolyn Barry’s extraordinary legacy and extend the museum’s reach across our campus, throughout Hampton Roads and beyond.”
Crawford succeeds Robert Wojtowicz, Ph.D., who has served as interim executive director of the museum since 2024.
“Nicole understands the distinctive role an academic art museum can play as a center for scholarship, creative exploration and public engagement,” Dr. Wojtowicz said. “Her extensive leadership and curatorial experience, coupled with her ability to build meaningful partnerships across disciplines and communities, makes her exceptionally well prepared to lead the museum. I look forward to welcoming her and supporting a smooth transition as the Barry enters this exciting new chapter.”
Crawford has led the 91Ƶ of Wyoming Art Museum since 2020, overseeing its exhibitions, collections, fundraising, strategic planning, donor relationships, university partnerships and community engagement. She joined the museum in 2009 as curator of collections and became assistant director and chief curator in 2018.
That experience, she said, has shown her how a university museum can support academic discovery while remaining accessible and inviting to the wider community.
“Leading an academic art museum has taught me that a university museum has an extraordinary opportunity and responsibility to serve many communities at once,” Crawford said. “It can be a place for rigorous scholarship and teaching, but it also needs to be welcoming to someone who may be walking into an art museum for the first time.”
At Wyoming, Crawford worked to make the museum an integral part of the university’s academic life. Among those efforts was a teaching gallery through which faculty members incorporated original works of art into courses in subjects ranging from history and law to engineering, science and education.
Crawford hopes to explore similar opportunities here.
“Art doesn’t belong only to art history or studio art,” she said. “I would love to explore what that kind of curricular integration might look like at Old Dominion 91Ƶ.”
Rather than transplanting programs from one institution to another, Crawford said she plans to approach the Barry Art Museum with a spirit of experimentation, collaboration and curiosity grounded in the museum’s distinctive identity.
“I have ideas, certainly, but I want to spend time with the staff, students, faculty, Board, the Barrys and the broader community and learn what they value about the museum and what they hope it can become,” she said. “The best museums are built through relationships, curiosity and a shared sense of possibility.”
Building on the Barry’s Vision
Founded by art collectors Carolyn and Richard Barry, the Barry Art Museum opened in 2018 and has grown into a significant cultural destination for Old Dominion 91Ƶ and Hampton Roads. Its permanent collection includes contemporary glass, American paintings and sculpture, maritime art, historic dolls and automata.
Richard and Carolyn Barry expressed enthusiasm about Crawford’s appointment as executive director. “She has the ideal background and experience to take the museum to the next level,” the Barrys said.
The museum is currently closed during construction of a 25,200-square-foot, three-story addition expected to open in early 2027. The Waitzer Wing will include expanded gallery and event space, a community gallery, a media video gallery, an educational laboratory and additional art storage.
The expansion was prompted in part by the Waitzer family’s 2022 gift of 165 works of 20th-century and contemporary glass sculpture. Funding for the project will also establish an endowment to support museum operations.
For Crawford, the addition represents an opportunity to do more than display additional works.
“The expansion gives us an extraordinary opportunity not simply to have more space, but to think differently about how we use that space and the collection,” she said.
Crawford is interested in creating connections among the museum’s collection areas, bringing historic works into conversation with contemporary art and introducing new voices and perspectives through exhibitions that connect Old Dominion 91Ƶ and Hampton Roads with broader national and international conversations.
“I think a museum can be locally meaningful and internationally engaged at the same time,” she said.
The expanded museum will also provide more opportunities to reach students, faculty members, families, schoolchildren and visitors who may not yet see the institution as a place for them.
“With an expanded museum comes the opportunity to expand our audiences,” Crawford said. “That’s tremendously exciting to me.”
Crawford’s academic background is in American Modernism, while much of her curatorial work during the past decade has focused on contemporary art. Her international projects have included work involving cultural reconciliation through the display of objects and contemporary art in post-colonial and post-conflict societies.
Before joining the 91Ƶ of Wyoming, Crawford served as vice president of gallery operations at Gerald Peters Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in art history and museum studies from the 91Ƶ of Nebraska. She also holds a certificate in arts management from the 91Ƶ of California, Irvine, and a Diversity and Inclusion in Leadership certificate from Cornell 91Ƶ.
As she prepares to join Old Dominion 91Ƶ, Crawford said she is grateful for the opportunity and the trust placed in her.
“Taking on the leadership of a museum is always a privilege but stepping into the Barry Art Museum at this particular moment, with the expansion underway and so much possibility ahead, makes that responsibility especially meaningful,” she said. “I’m incredibly excited to become part of that work at Old Dominion 91Ƶ.”
Lewis Webb, a member of Old Dominion 91Ƶ’s Board of Visitors and chair of the search committee for the museum’s next executive director, said the committee was looking for a leader who could build on the museum’s foundation while guiding it through a period of significant growth.
“As we approach the 10th year of our initial founding and the transformation coming with our new building, we sought a visionary, experienced leader who can help us make the leap to this new chapter, as well as the warm, relational person our community expects,” Webb said. “A tall order, but we found that in Nicole Crawford and could not be happier.”